Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [266]
An assault on 4 May resulted in five ships sunk and eleven damaged, all save one by suicide planes. Between the eleventh and the fourteenth, three flagships were damaged—the carriers Bunker Hill and Enterprise, together with the battleship New Mexico. “The fighting off Okinawa became routine761,” wrote an American carrier commander, “but it was probably the most dangerous brand of routine to be found in the history of WWII.” “Jocko” Clark’s flag lieutenant sometimes removed bad news from the overnight “Ultra Board” on the bridge until his admiral had eaten breakfast. Suicidal courage was not the exclusive prerogative of the Japanese. On 10 May, two Corsairs intercepted a twin-engined enemy “Nick” at 35,000 feet. One was unable to get within range, and the other’s guns froze. Rather than lose his quarry, the American pilot deliberately drove into the Nick’s rudder and stabiliser, causing it to crash. The Corsair made an emergency landing without its propeller. The pilot survived to receive a Navy Cross.
When the kamikaze offensive began in October 1944, most of the Japanese pilots were trained and experienced aircrew. Six months later, “special attack unit” commanders had perceived the folly of sacrificing such men. Most suicide pilots were now tyros, trained only to fly a course to a target. More experienced fliers either attempted conventional bombing missions, or provided fighter cover for the kamikazes. Lt. Toshio Hijikata, eldest son of a post office official, had joined the navy from university as a volunteer in 1943. Mocked by elite career officers as a mere hired gun, he rejoined by asking defiantly which of them could fly better than himself. Thanks to a long spell as an instructor in Korea, Hijikata joined 303 Squadron on Kyushu in April 1945 with the benefit of some four hundred hours on Zeroes already in his logbook, a preparation which did as much as luck to keep him alive through the months which followed.
The unit’s principal task was to fly high cover for the Okinawa kamikazes. They took off from Kagoshima, rendezvoused with attack planes from nearby Kanoya, and settled down to conserve fuel as best they could on the 350-mile run south. At best, they could achieve only ten minutes’ endurance over the battle area. Careless fuel-users found themselves ditching in the sea on the way home. Hijikata had few illusions about his own prospects. “I expected to die762. I knew we were going to lose the war—so did everybody. Nobody said it aloud, everybody thought it.” He loved flying his Zero, but was acutely conscious that it was outclassed by the American Hellcats. Hijikata was credited with shooting down one enemy fighter, but on most missions he and his comrades could hope only to buy time and airspace for the kamikazes to do their business. Often, his eyes misted with tears as he gazed down at the doomed men flying below him. A significant number were his own former flight students.
Some kamikazes at Kanoya, waiting to sortie, passed their last days on earth helping local peasants with the harvest. Once, a mother and daughter arrived from Tokyo to visit the girl’s fiancé. Base officers disingenuously told the women that her young man had already left for deployment to a forward air base near Okinawa. She was obliged to content herself with touching the bamboo bed on which the young pilot had slept. The girl was not informed that he would not be returning from his only operational flight. Petty Officer Hachiro Miyashita, an aircraft maintenance specialist, spent the spring and summer of 1945 at the base of 601 Naval Air Squadron, a kamikaze unit. Pilots’ parting instructions decreed blandly: “Once you take off from here, you will not be coming back; you